Parenting, Raising Children, and Rising Debt

养育子女、抚养孩子和不断增加的债务

基本信息

批准号：
1657860
负责人：
Nina Bandelj
金额：
$ 15.4万
依托单位：
University of California-Irvine
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
Standard Grant
财政年份：
2017
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2017-04-01 至 2021-09-30
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1657860&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
Parenting Raising Children Rising Debt

项目摘要

This project will study the link between raising children and rising debt and examines the implications for growing economic inequalities. The U.S. Federal Reserve reports that total household debt in the U.S. has climbed to a staggering $12 trillion. Demographers document increasing expenditures for raising children over time. This project will determine the extent to which these two trends are related, and whether households take on debt to invest in their children. As such, this study will help us better understand the drivers of American household indebtedness as well as the rise in family income inequality and widening children's academic achievement gap. The findings of this project will inform policy proposals on funding of public education from preschool to high school, and the risks of widespread reliance on educational loans to facilitate social mobility of the new generations of Americans. The investigators will broadly disseminate results through presentations and publications in scholarly articles and a book, as well as general-interest essays and in communications aimed at policymakers. The project will also provide training and mentorship opportunities by involving female and underrepresented minority graduate and undergraduate students in the research process and publications. This will facilitate their success on the job market or for graduate school entry, promoting their participation in STEM.The specific research goals of this project are to determine the levels of overall debt, and, separately, levels of mortgage, educational and credit card debt, for families with children in the home, compared to families without children, and how such indebtedness has changed since the early 1990s. The project will also determine how debt and debt type differs by socio-economic status and race/ethnicity of families. Lastly, the project will investigate how families understand investment in children, including the legitimacy of taking on debt for the sake of raising kids. Quantitative data from the tri-annual Survey of Consumer Finances (1989 through 2013) and Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1997-2013) as well as 50 semi-structured interviews with households will be analyzed to answer these questions. The project will advance scholarship in economic sociology on the moral and emotional economy, using parenting as a new strategic research site. The findings will contribute to cultural sociology that treats meaning-making as central to theorizing about economic inequality. Analyzing the raising kids/rising debt nexus will question the common divide between private family concerns over children, on the one hand, and the functioning of financial markets, on the other hand. This study will expose how features of the new economy--stiff competition, economic insecurity, and paramount knowledge investment --infiltrate the intimate lives of families, all the while the resultant new economy of parenting, reliant on debt and financing to invest in children, upholds the contemporary financialization of the U.S. economy.

该项目将研究抚养孩子与债务增加之间的联系，并探讨其对日益严重的经济不平等的影响。美联储报告称，美国家庭债务总额已攀升至惊人的 12 万亿美元。人口统计学家记录了随着时间的推移，抚养孩子的支出不断增加。该项目将确定这两种趋势的相关程度，以及家庭是否举债投资于孩子。因此，这项研究将帮助我们更好地了解美国家庭债务的驱动因素以及家庭收入不平等的加剧和儿童学业成绩差距的扩大。该项目的研究结果将为从学前班到高中的公共教育筹资的政策建议提供信息，以及广泛依赖教育贷款以促进新一代美国人的社会流动性的风险。调查人员将通过学术文章和书籍中的演示和出版物、以及针对政策制定者的普遍兴趣论文和交流来广泛传播结果。该项目还将通过让女性和代表性不足的少数族裔研究生和本科生参与研究过程和出版物来提供培训和指导机会。这将促进他们在就业市场或进入研究生院取得成功，促进他们参与 STEM。该项目的具体研究目标是确定总体债务水平，以及抵押贷款、教育和信用卡债务水平，与没有孩子的家庭相比，有孩子的家庭，以及自 20 世纪 90 年代初以来这种债务发生了怎样的变化。该项目还将确定债务和债务类型如何因社会经济地位和家庭种族/民族而异。最后，该项目将调查家庭如何理解对儿童的投资，包括为了抚养孩子而承担债务的合法性。我们将分析三年一度的消费者财务调查（1989 年至 2013 年）和收入动态小组研究（1997 年至 2013 年）的定量数据以及 50 次家庭半结构化访谈来回答这些问题。该项目将利用育儿作为新的战略研究场所，推进经济社会学在道德和情感经济方面的学术研究。这些发现将为文化社会学做出贡献，文化社会学将意义建构视为经济不平等理论的核心。分析抚养孩子与不断上升的债务之间的关系，将质疑私人家庭对孩子的担忧与金融市场运作之间的共同分歧。这项研究将揭示新经济的特征——激烈的竞争、经济不安全和至关重要的知识投资——如何渗透到家庭的亲密生活，同时由此产生的养育新经济，依赖债务和融资来投资于儿童，维护美国经济的当代金融化。